The Crucible of Man (Something Wicked Part II)

Iced Earth

SPV/Steamhammer, 2008

Well, I picked up the new Iced Earth album today for £10.99 and it's worth every penny.

The Crucible of Man is the sequal to 2007's Framing Armageddon. Both albums combined tell the story of Set Abominae, the only surviving member of an original Earth tribe, destroying Mankind. Cheery stuff.

There's been a lot of buzz about this album due to the return of Matt Barlow, the true and in this writer's opinion, best vocalist of Iced Earth. Sure enough, he's back on form here, with his voice being as powerful as ever. His deeper tones are much more suited to Iced Earth that Tim Owens' were.

The music is much better than Framing Armageddon, with many more memorable songs and nowhere near as many pointless interludes as Framing Armageddon. While The Crucible has better songs, the music does not sound much different from Framing Armageddon. Most of the songs are slower in pace and although Matt Barlow is back, it does not sound like Matt Barlow era Iced Earth. Still, there's some great stuff to be heard here, such as Divide Devour, Crucify the King, I Walk Alone and my personal favourite, Minions of the Watch.

Something's been bugging me however. The original story of these two albums was outlined in three songs on 1998's Something Wicked This Way Comes and to me, some songs on Framing Armageddon and Crucible of Man sound like long, drawn out versions of these three songs. Three particularly notible culprits are Something Wicked (Part 1) Something Wicked (Part II) and Something Wicked (Part III) which sound like Prophecy, Birth of the Wicked and The Coming Curse respectively. While I still like both albums, I feel that that was a rather lazy move by Jon Schaffer.

Overall, the Crucible of Man is a pretty good album and a great way to see Matt Barlow return. I'll look forward to hearing more from the new Matt Barlow Iced Earth after this. 9/10

Well, it's a milestone. As such, I want to do something special, but can't be arsed. Instead, here's a Ctrl C + Ctrl V from Pepsi-KFC's page with my information instead.

Favourite drinks - Rubicon with Guava, Monster Energy Juice, Iron Bru, Pepsi Twist

Favourite Food - Corn on the cob, Morrisons Salads, White Chocolate, Flying Saucers (sweets) and Spicy Rice Crackers

Favourite Music - Metal, all sub-genres except Nu/Alternative (AKA False Metal), Industrial/Electronic and Metalcore.

Favourite Bands- ICED MOTHERF***ING EARTH!!!, Helloween, Sonata Arctica, Blind Guardian, Alestorm, Stratovarius, Demons and Wizards, Primal Fear, Firewind, Kiuas, Masterplan, Mob Rules, Rhapsody, Running Wild, Power Quest, Nuclear Assault, Children of Bodom, Grave Digger, Edguy, Avantasia, Dreamtale, Axenstar, Bolt Thrower, Amon Amarth, Manowar, Hibria (Apart from the first three, those were not in order)

Favourite game developers - DMA Design (GTAs 1-3 and Body Harvest), Acclaim (Turok 1-3, Burnout 1, Crazy Taxi, 18 Wheeler) and of course, classical Nintendo (LYLAT WARS, All the good Marios, Kirby, Starfox, all the classics)

Least Favourite Food - Vegetables, Marmite, Coleslaw, Pasta with Pesto, everything available in Cofee Shops

Least Favourite Drinks - Everything available in Coffee Shops, especially all that eco-friendly water, Elderflower anything, any hot drinks.

Least Favourite Developers - EA (James Bond, Every crappy film tie-in ever), Amusment Vision(Super Monkey Ball, all those crappy GC football games), Modern (2001-Today) Sega(Sonic Heroes etc.), Valve (Counter Strike and Steam)

Least Favourite "Music" - Slipknot, Bullet for my Valentine, Led Zepplin, Fall Out Boy, MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE, Amy Winehouse, KoRn, Scouting for Girls, Arctic Monkeys, Trivium, Linkin Park... just Indie and Emo in general

Hobbies -Listening to headbangingly awesome Heavy Metal, collecting CDs, collecting 1/72 scale miniatures...but I haven't done that for some time

Ok, so some more songs of the week. Oh, and Pepsi-KFC, I reccomend you check out the Sonata Atctica one, it has a slight Japanese sound

Amon Amarth- Twilight of the Thunder God (Melodic Death Metal)

Firewind- Insanity (Power/Speed Metal)

Iced Earth- The Coming Curse (Power/Thrash Metal)

Sonata Arctica- My Land (Power Metal)

Stratovarius- Soul of a Vagabond (Power Metal)

And the claasic of this week:

Avantasia- The Tower (Power Metal)